


Two Boys

by nice_girls_play



Series: Other 'Verses, Other Rimmers [1]
Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-01
Updated: 2011-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-15 07:12:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/158353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nice_girls_play/pseuds/nice_girls_play
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lister imagines two boys on another Earth, in another time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Boys

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for _Dimension Jump_ , _Stoke Me a Clipper_ , _Back to Reality_ , speculation on _Back to Earth_ , and -- if you squint -- a deleted scene from _Rimmerworld_.

"I found one dimension where we actually were brothers.."

The statement comes out of nowhere. Lister looks up from his magazine to where his new/old bunkmate is checking his 'H' in the mirror, frowing.

"What, seriously?" he asks, wincing at the sensory images of wavy brown hair and the reek of urine-soaked wool.

Rimmer nods, the two-tone blue and red uniform jacket shimmering under the light.

"It was based on a choice my brother John made when he was fifteen."

"What was that?"

"Whether or not to chop up our parents with an axe. " Tapered fingertips continue to toy with the edges of immovable brand. Lister wonders briefly why he bothered to fit himself with it once again, when the hard light remote that controlled Ace's bee could easily eliminate it.

"It might have been all right if Frank hadn't gotten in the way. He ended up burying them in the back garden between our mother's narcissas. The outpost authorities had to identify my father by his liver nodules and the metal plate in his pancreas."

Somehow, Lister doesn't doubt either for a second.

"There was no foster system on Io, so Howard and I were sent to Earth. Your father fostered me at age nine. Adopted me when I was ten. After he died, your grandmother raised us both."

"Not blood brothers then." He sighs, the image of Sebastian and Billy blissfully fading from his brain on a tsunami of squid's ink.

"Fortunately no."

"Fortunately?"

He leans down and over to look at Rimmer, gazing at their reflection in the mirror. Rimmer's eyes meet his briefly in the reflection then glance back down at the hands he needlessly washes in the sink, his lips tight.

"She found us in the garage, blowing off on the groundsels."

The mental image is... startling.

Lister's smirk unfolds slowly, like a flower's petals slowly peeling back; spreading herself open for sunlight.

"How old were we?"

"I was 21, home on leave from tech school. You would have been about 15."

Lister doesn't need to guess who the initiator was. His grin broadens even as Rimmer's sulk deepens.

Rimmer was already thirty when he met him, but it doesn't take much imagination to mentally recede those features to a youthful, adolescent appearance: all arms and legs and too much nose, curls out of control because Gran wouldn't have wasted money on pomade or styling wax. Or to put his own youthful adolescent self on top of him, with their pants around their knees, kissing and frotting on the concrete and dirt floor behind Dad's hopper. One of them -- himself -- eventually scuttling downward, getting grit, motor oil and pieces of rusted, stripped bolts and coils in unspeakable places just for a taste of...

Lister shifts on the bed, making a show of stretching his booted legs out across the top of the bunk. Rimmer scrubs his hands vigorously under the hot tap.

"Was he the one?"

"*The one*...?"

"The one who replaced you as Ace."

"No."

He doesn't bother to repeat the statement as a question. There's something under the tight exterior that tells him he's on shaky ground; too shaky to even warrant his prodding.

He gets his answer, anyway; and this time Rimmer, shutting the tap off without drying his hands, even looks up long enough to give it to him.

"His Lister wouldn't let him go."


End file.
